This invention relates to a negative type light-sensitive silver halide photographic material.
In recent years, in the field of printing plates, the developing method by use of a developer of hydroquinone alone called lith-developing for obtaining an image of high contrast has been the main stream, but this method is poor in preservability of the developer, and also since the developing time is long, a rapid access development using phenidone or metol as the developing agent is incorporated.
However, if such developer is used, the high contrast characteristic of lith-developing will be lost.
Accordingly, so as to have high contrast characteristic comparable with lith-developing in spite of fast processing, the method of adding a tetrazolium compound or a hydrazine compound into the film has been proposed, and it has been reported that an image of high contrast can be obtained by this method even by fast processing with a developing time of 20 to 30 seconds.
However, the trend of fast processing in recent years is demanding even ultra-fast processing such as shorter than 20 seconds, and also the situation is such that also the image quality inferior to the present level is not tolerable. When the light-sensitive material of the prior art is subjected to ultra-fast processing with a developing time as short as 15 seconds by use of a processing solution of the prior art, the amount of the silver developed is small to give no sufficient density as unsuitable for practical application.
Further, in this field of art, there is the working of etching chemically developed silver, which is called "reduction", and the image developed is demanded to have sufficient amount of silver, and also from the standpoint of saving of resources, it is preferable that 90% of the silver coated should participate effectively in the development.
Thus, it has been desired to have a means which enables development of sufficient silver amount without waste within a short time and can give an image of high contrast.